The Foolish Beast

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Chapter 15: The Foolish Beast

At the cries for help, Chen Beiwu hesitated. Rather than approach immediately, he cautiously circled the area, examining the footprints around him.

He crouched, brushed aside the dry grass covering the tracks, and picked up a reddish-brown clod left at the edge of one print with his right hand. He crushed it and held it beneath his nose.

It's dried demon beast blood, and the scents are different. Chen Beiwu's eyes flickered as he looked toward the source of the voice.

The setting sun was blood-red. A young girl huddled beneath an ancient tree, whimpering weakly for help.

Perhaps she was desperately poor; her coarse hemp dress barely covered her private parts, leaving her somewhat dark limbs exposed.

Her right leg was caught in a rusty beast trap, its iron teeth sunk deep into her flesh, leaving her unable to move.

Dark red blood dripped steadily from the wound, staining the soil beneath the tree reddish brown.

The herb basket she had carried on her back had fallen to one side, and a dozen or so stalks of shexian grass lay scattered across the ground.

As though sensing something, the girl slowly raised her head, revealing hair clumped together by cold sweat. Her gaze met Chen Beiwu's.

"Help... help me!" The girl seemed to have no strength left to struggle, and her cries grew almost inaudible.

Chen Beiwu watched her whimper in silence, his expression cold.

At this, despair gradually filled the girl's eyes.

After a moment's hesitation, she gritted her teeth and slowly twisted her body. Reaching beneath the herb basket with a rough hand, she drew out a spiritual herb with opposite, heavily wrinkled leaves. Small serrations lined both edges, with sparse red hairs growing on both faces of the teeth.

It was a second-tier spiritual herb a full hundred years old: bloodface vine.

"Please save me, my lord. I have a treasure to offer you."

"Don't be afraid, miss. I'll help you."

Greed appeared on Chen Beiwu's face as he strode toward the bloodface vine.

Swish!

Just as Chen Beiwu was about to touch the bloodface vine, a yellowish-brown beast's tail suddenly emerged from behind the girl, lashing toward his chest with a foul reek of demonic energy.

"Why not keep up the act?"

Chen Beiwu shot backward thirty feet. As he evaded the tail, he flicked his fingertip. Empowered by his pure magical energy, a crystalline needle pierced through the demonic energy at tremendous speed, leaving an emerald-green pinhole in the girl's body.

"How did you find out?"

The girl smiled eerily. Her deathly pale face melted away like snow, revealing an ugly weasel's head. The beast trap around her right leg also transformed into a poisonous vine trap covered in barbs.

"But it doesn't matter. With your cultivation at the seventh layer of Qi Refining, you can never escape my grasp." The Illusion Weasel Wolf grinned viciously, and a vast surge of spiritual power swept toward Chen Beiwu.

It had cultivated painstakingly for three hundred years, devouring vast quantities of flesh and blood, yet had only accumulated forty-nine years of cultivation power.

If it could devour this human Qi Refining cultivator with his pure, spiritually attuned constitution, it might break through the shackles of its bloodline and advance into a second-tier spirit beast. The cultivation power that had stagnated within it for years would also finally break through.

[Species]: Illusion Weasel Wolf (common name: Illusion-Type Wolf)

[Attributes]: Water, poison

[Bloodline]: First-tier, upper-grade (exotic beast)

[Cultivation power]: Below fifty years

[Talent]: Captive-Eye Illusion (illusions created by the Illusion Weasel Wolf can deceive all five senses)

Chen Beiwu showed no surprise when his opponent discarded its disguise.

A beast was still a beast. Even if it absorbed the essence of the sun and moon and breathed in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to gain intelligence, it could not outwit humans skilled in scheming.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle!

At that moment, the Illusion Weasel Wolf's vicious grin abruptly vanished, replaced by an expression of terror.

"Go on, laugh. Why aren't you laughing anymore?" Chen Beiwu asked coldly.

In a head-on fight, he would have struggled to kill an exotic beast whose aura rivaled that of a ninth-layer Qi Refining cultivator. He might even have needed talismans to retreat safely.

Unfortunately for his opponent, it had acted foolishly. Overconfident in its innate talent, it had tried to trap and kill him without suffering a scratch, only to give him an opening to turn its own scheme against it.

;psme&;psme&

Damn it!

Feeling the poison corrode the demonic energy within its body, the Illusion Weasel Wolf's heart trembled. Without a second thought, it stuck up its rear and expelled a huge cloud of foul gas to conceal its movements.

Though its cultivation was high, the nature of its species left it ill-suited to close combat.

Without the illusions it usually relied on, and hampered by poison, it might very well fall at the hands of a Qi Refining cultivator.

If it did not flee now, when would it?

Picking up the fallen bloodface vine, Chen Beiwu did not immediately rush after it. Instead, he maintained a distance that was neither too close nor too far.

He gave his opponent neither a chance to make a desperate last stand nor time to find herbs to purge the poison.

An hour later, the Illusion Weasel Wolf suddenly stopped fleeing. Using a thicket to hide itself from view, it turned back to launch a surprise attack. But before it could release its foul gas, Chen Beiwu shot backward another thirty feet, putting ample distance between them.

As this repeated and time passed, the Illusion Weasel Wolf's eyes gradually grew dull and lifeless.

Perhaps realizing it had no escape, the Illusion Weasel Wolf changed direction and sprinted away.

That's the Blue Rock Lion's territory!

Chen Beiwu's expression changed. Wincing at the expense, he took out a first-tier, upper-grade Water Blade Talisman.

His strategy for killing the Illusion Weasel Wolf without injury was certainly safe, but if he kept chasing it like this, this piece of meat might well end up in the Blue Rock Lion's jaws.

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

As Chen Beiwu channeled magical energy into it, ripples spread across the talisman's surface. It then shattered in midair, transforming into hundreds of water threads as fine as hair.

The water threads wove into a net. In the blink of an eye, they condensed into three water blades as thin as cicada wings and caught up with the fleeing Illusion Weasel Wolf.

In an instant, its head flew into the air.

Perhaps its death had come too quickly; its eyes still held terror and disbelief.

Chen Beiwu hurried forward impatiently. Beside the Illusion Weasel Wolf's corpse, he took out the Bone Blade, first extracting its blood essence, then skinning it and collecting its tail hairs.

Once processed, the Illusion Weasel Wolf's hide could make decent talisman paper, while its tail hairs could be used to make weasel-hair brushes. Both would fetch a high price.

Adding in the bloodface vine the Illusion Weasel Wolf had used as bait, Chen Beiwu had truly made a killing.

This is the meat of a powerful spirit monster. Throwing it away would be a shame. After a moment's hesitation, Chen Beiwu divided up the Illusion Weasel Wolf's meat and packed it away.

Human cultivators could not eat Illusion Weasel Wolf meat, but that did not mean Iron Egg could not.

Exotic beasts could devour one another to accumulate cultivation power, but few cultivators improved their companion beasts' cultivation power by feeding them flesh and blood.

Feeding them a little was fine, but too much would not only make companion beasts vicious; it would also make the wildness buried deep in their bloodlines harder to eradicate. They might even turn on their masters.

Iron Egg was a fire-element exotic beast that had already gained intelligence and could disregard the poison lingering in the Illusion Weasel Wolf's meat. Eating a little flesh and blood to increase his cultivation power should do no harm or cost him his reason.

Still, to ensure Iron Egg would not lose control, Chen Beiwu decided to roast the Illusion Weasel Wolf's meat before feeding it to him.

Doing so, however, would leave less than a tenth of the demonic power in the meat, greatly reducing its cultivation-enhancing effects.

He returned to the cultivation room.

Chen Beiwu hefted the heavy bundle in his hand, undisguised excitement in his eyes.

I can carry nonliving things through by touching them. What about living things? He looked expectantly toward another jar.

(End of chapter)